I am avoiding something.
I sweep the floor, and I stop for an early lunch. I scroll through Facebook. I stop at the health food store and spend ten minutes spraying healthy (?) perfume samples into the air in aisle one. I decide to bring my girls back with me; I need more available arms on which to spray the testers. I scroll through Twitter. I squash a bug and light a candle, not for the departed bug, but because it smells weird despite the coconut and vanilla scents lingering on my wrist. I smell like summer vacation. Or a cupcake.
I am avoiding something.
I sit down and I ask myself why, and I know it’s not because I need a break. It’s not because I’m tired or don’t want to dig into the work. I sit with the feeling and I know immediately, it is because I am afraid. I am afraid that anything I have to offer will not be enough. This is the form my fear always takes. And so I decide to sidle up to the work, in the hopes that fear won’t notice my sideways inch.
I brew a cup of tea and I let my thoughts rest for a minute on the work at hand. I read an article, and the words take me one step closer. I scribble a little here, and in the black spiral bound notebook there. I’m moving and fear doesn’t know whether it should give up or catch up. I open the mostly blank page, and I re-read yesterday’s work. I am closing in, but so is the knowing–I am not enough for this.
I open the page again. The cursor blinks like a turn signal, and I decide to make a right. I turn into the work, fear pulls up alongside, but I ignore it and I write.
